Last edited on February 03, 2024. View history
Breadfruit
Breadfruit
How to sow breadfruit: Young tree or suckers
Sun requirement for breadfruit: Plant in Full Sun
The Breadfruit tree is a flowering tree in the Moraceae family (which also includes Mulberry and Jackfruit) that produces grapefruit-sized or larger round yellow fruit. It is an ultra-tropical plant native to the South Pacific that has spread throughout Oceania, South and Southeast Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Caribbean, Central America, and Africa. It requires temperatures between 16–38 °C and an annual rainfall of 200–250 cm. It can be grown outdoors in USDA Zones 9b-11, or indoors in a container. It's name comes from the texture of it's fruit when cooked, which is similar to freshly baked bread and has a potato-like flavor. The tree's fruits can be eaten ripe as a fruit or underripe as a vegetable. A single tree can produce 200 or more fruits per season. It's light, sturdy timber is used in building ships and houses in the tropics, and all parts of the tree yield latex, which can be used to caulk boats.
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Breadfruit facts
Lifespan
Height
2600cmCrop cycle
Max altitude
Optimal light
What are growing degree days?
A plant grows with warmth, not with days. A growing degree day is one day's worth of useful warmth: how many degrees the day's average temperature is above the lowest temperature the crop grows at. Add them up from planting and you know how far along the crop is, whatever the calendar says.
Say that lowest temperature is 10°C. A day averaging 17°C gives 7 growing degree days. A day averaging 8°C gives none, as it is too cold for the crop to grow. That is why the same lettuce takes about 50 days in a summer and 90 in an autumn: it needs the same total warmth either way.
For breadfruit, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 16°C and a shortest growing cycle of 300 days at its best temperature, about 3300 growing degree days to a first harvest.
Where you've told us where your garden is, we use this and the weather there to predict when your breadfruit will be ready to harvest. We don't use it for how long a plant lives or when it finishes: we go by what members have logged for that.
Photos
Photos
Breadfruit crops
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Time to harvest
If sown now, expect a first harvest in about 300 to 365 days.
From the growing cycle in the FAO EcoCrop database, which is the same wherever it is grown.
Ecological requirements
Data from the FAO EcoCrop database for Artocarpus altilis (Parkinson) Fosberg
| Family / Taxonomy | Magnoliopsida Dilleniidae Urticales Moraceae |
|---|---|
| Life form | tree |
| Life span | perennial |
| Habit | erect |
| Optimal soil depth | deep (>>150 cm) |
| Optimal soil texture | heavy, medium, light, organic |
| Optimal soil fertility | high |
| Optimal soil drainage | well (dry spells) |
| Optimal soil salinity | low (<4 dS/m) |
| Photoperiod | short day (<12 hours) |
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